The young Rainouart deeply mourned his mother's memory, for she had
ever been his ideal of gentle womanhood, and he made it a mighty
resolve in all his life so to act as if she were still with him and her
approbation still to be won. Losing thus his best friend, he would have
been well content to remain in the service of the adventurous French
king, but the death of Guy II. changed his fortune. When the Duchy
of Athens came to Count Baldwin, and that jovial freebooter hurried
hot-foot to Greece and found himself in unquestioned possession of
his duchy, he remembered, belated, that he was a family man. His wife
was dead, indeed, but his son lived, and a son was an advantageous
possession for the holder of a great title and the ruler of a great
state. So messengers were sent speeding across seas to the court of
King Philip the Fair, summoning the young man by his filial allegiance
to Athens and to the father whom he had never seen. It is by no means
overlikely that Rainouart would have thriven at the court of Philip
the Fair. For though that astute and unscrupulous monarch had a high
regard for the strength, the courage, and the scholarship of the
young knight, Rainouart had other qualities which Philip disliked
exceedingly, chiefly, indeed, the candor of his mind and the frankness
of his speech. He would never consent to condone King Philip's savage
treatment of Pope Boniface VII., which had ended, as it seemed, in the
pontiff's death at the hands of Philip's men. He held his peace about
it, as was meet in the servant of a king, but once when Philip plied
him for his opinion, and would take no denial, Rainouart said what he
thought, simply and straightly, and the king never plied him for his
opinion again, deciding that he was better as a king's fighter than
as a king's councillor. Yet he liked the lad for his comeliness, and
Rainouart liked the king as his lord. So the young man regretfully said
farewell to the king, his master, and his master gave him the beautiful
painted manuscript of William of Lorris's romance as a farewell gift,
and the young man journeyed over-seas to his father's duchy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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